Smudge

by Bill Jansen

A crocus this morning heard my confession.
The same bird looked at me,
its back to the wind.

Kyrie, eleison

There  was a smudge of ashes on my forehead.
The sky wore gray lingerie,
but who was tempted?

Christe, eleison

Processions waited to start on some hawthorns:
processions of cold blossoms,
ashamed of their beauty.

Kyrie, eleison

Beasts and flowers about to take communion.
I get into line.
But only I am moving.

Christe, eleison

Farmer's Arm

by Bill Jansen

This morning  I drive through farmland,
(B.B. King on the radio)
and let my hand think it is the muzzle of an Irish Setter,

I bark at the man in overalls who waves at us from his property.

Sadly he seems to have only one arm.

But even with just one arm
I like to think he has a good wife,
as well as loyal children who help with the chores.

We proceed down the road
raising a cloud of dust behind us.
No wife, no children, no farmer's arm.

Two sets of nostrils decide to inhale every transient miracle,
grip life like some useless rag
being pulled on by another more powerful dog
at the opposite end of the world.

Long Distance

by Bill Jansen

32nd cousin twice removed (3.47 ERA)
of Earl Skruggs I get jumped
at karaoke sea-lion cave in Forest Grove,
(across from Periscope used book store)
late, but I make it
to 1000th Grand Opening of Bi-Mart,
(across from Ace Hardware).
None of the vehicles in parking lot
are later than 1952.
There is a persistent rain
that smells of Old Spice
but the truth and the ground
and every other bastard thing is dry.
Lucky Strike model in cocktail dress
lifts me out of my 94 Mazda pickup
and abandons me: a baby smoking a cigarette.
I crawl happily toward the store entrance.
1946 in a cottage near a clover leaf
in New Jersey, the cocktail waitress
has her dress snagged on barb wire
a gallant rapist is holding down with an umbrella.
In the cottage a phone is ringing off the hook.
Will someone please pick up the phone,
unavoidably delayed by a storm
in the path of their migration
the dead are calling collect.

Creation stopped--for Me--

by Bill Jansen

A bullet riddled speed limit sign
was whistling Dixie by the road
when a Ford Fairlane stopped
and the petite woman driver said:
"Hee hee. Get in-- Wile E. Coyote, (I presume)."
She introduced herself
as Emily Dickinson,
comet-tailed back onto the freeway
(while lighting up a Pall Mall)
and began to converse rapidly
in aphorisms and oblique sentences.
Finally, remembering perhaps my existence,
she asked:
"so whatcha doin, Wile E."
I release my death grip on dashboard,
and repeat my favorite lie,
said I'm ticking off the requirements
for a hitch-hiking merit badge.
She gave no sign whether she
believed me or not,
but she sure was a nice change
from whatever it was
that left me earlier that day
on the same road shackled to a bee.
Her eyes were marriage ceremonies
in a Swiss Convent garden.
As twilight began to yield to night
she let me out in Tulsa.
Gave me 10 bucks for a motel,
but unfortunately I lost
the stubby yellow pencil
she said was made
from the wood of Calvary.

Not An Oyster

by Bill Jansen

Passive oyster who art has put into a shell,
sanctified be thy dream, thy bread sticks come,
thy flesh be light, thy bed of lettuce clean
and fresh upon thy plate, in this still life
by some anonymous realist, possibly French.
Thy meaning remain stubbornly obscure
to us on earth as we are to those in heaven.
May the tides of light that enter this room
(somewhere a toilet drains) be always blue.
Black fingernails of night not open you.
Weary maids keep you straightened on wall.
No vandal ignore thy do not disturb aura.
And lead us not into cheap hotel temptations,
as we contemplate thy calculus of illusion.
O let us taste thy template of reality,
thy cracking paint and immortality.
Or maybe not, because on looking closer
I see that you are a cabbage, not an oyster,
bruised by thy fall from the earthy Paris sky.

INTERIOR OF GARAGE

by Bill Jansen

This morning I am in a garage
I assume is somewhere near Dartmouth.
Though there is also evidence
that I may be in the studio of Mario Fiorillo.
I mean the unfinished portrait
of his Welsh landlord against a bicycle.
However that may be, a 1946 purple Bugatti
dominates my surroundings, wherever I am.
One of those babies you have to be
wearing a black tie for it to start.
Also arguing against, though not refuting,
the notion that I am in Wales,
is the point guard of the Dartmouth
Women's basketball team,
hanging up tools in their chalk outlines.
In fact she is a chalk outline herself,
and would probably fit easily
into the chalk outline of Oona O'Neill,
who, as you may know, I was crazy about,
and if this is a garage there must be a front porch
somewhere not far off.
And if there is a front porch there is a newspaper
with a sports page.
I should at least find out who won.
Then I can talk about the game as if I was there,
and maybe there will be a story
about a local landlord who has gone missing.